Curative Education

Schmidt Number: S-5798

On-line since: 21st August 2004

FIFTH LECTURE

30th June, 1924

You will have been able
to see how certain abnormalities in the life of the soul which we can
recognise as symptoms of the oncoming of illness, show themselves in
children in a rather undefined form, developing only later in a more
definite manner. I was able to show you, for instance, how what later
on becomes hysteria manifests in early childhood in a manner that is
peculiar to that period, the abnormality remaining as yet quite
undefined. In order however to be able to come to correct conclusions
in regard to abnormalities that belong to childhood, we must also
bear in mind the whole connection that exists between the pre-natal
life (which may be said to carry into the physical life on earth the
impulse of karma) and the gradual development of the child through
the first two epochs  even perhaps also through the third.

Today we shall still
continue to speak, by way of preparation, of general principles; then
we shall be able afterwards to add what further needs to be said,
with practical examples in front of us. For tomorrow morning Frau Dr.
Wegman will put at our disposal a boy whom we have had here under
treatment for some considerable time, and in whom we shall be able to
demonstrate a condition that is strikingly typical.

And now in order to
make clear to you something that you will need to know before seeing
this boy, I should like to draw for you here a sketch of the human
organism, in its totality.

That there be no confusion, I will always
draw the ego organisation red, then the astral organisation
purple, the etheric organisation yellow, and lastly, the
physical organisation white. And now let us be quite clear and
exact in our thinking, and do our best to grasp the matter as
accurately as possible. For the human organisation is not of such a
nature that we can say: There is the ego organisation, there
the astral organisation, there the etheric organisation,
and so on. We must rather think of it in the following way. Picture
to yourselves a being (see circles above, in the middle) organised in
such a way that there is first of all, on the outside, the ego
organisation (red); then, further inwards, the astral organisation
(purple), then the etheric (yellow), and then the physical (white).
You will have thus a being who shows his ego organisation outside,
while he drives the astral organisation farther in, the etheric still
farther in and the physical organisation farthest in of all.

And now, beside it, we
will draw a different arrangement, where we have the ego organisation
right inside (red), the astral organisation, as it were, raying
outwards (purple); then, farther out, the etheric organisation
(yellow), and still farther out, the physical organisation (white).
We have now before us two beings that are the direct polar opposite
of one another. Look at them carefully. As you see, the second being
(on the left) will present, on the outside, a strong physical
organisation, into which plays also the etheric organisation, whilst
the astral and ego organisations tend to disappear within. But now,
these conditions being given, a change can come about. The
configuration of the being I have sketched here (on the left) may be
modified in the following way
(see
Figure 1,
left below).
Here the physical organisation (white)
may be fully developed above, while below it is
unfinished, left open. Then we can have the etheric organisation
(yellow), somewhat stronger here below than the physical, yet still
unfinished. And we can have here the astral organisation (purple)
coming down more in a sweeping curve; and, finally, the ego
organisation (red) descending like a kind of thread. What we sketched
before diagrammatically in the form of a sphere can quite well
manifest also in this way.

To make the matter
still clearer, I will draw this last figure here once again
(see upper part of
Figure 1,
right)
 the ego organisation (red), the astral organisation (purple), and
ether organisation (yellow) and the physical organisation (white).
And now we will add on to it below, the other being (figure in
the middle, above) and we will do it in the following way. To begin
with, for the ego organisation, which is outside, instead of
describing a circle, as I did before, I will let the circle break and
bend, so that we have this kind of form
(red, on the lower part of
Figure 1,
on the right).
As a matter of fact, this is what is continually happening with the
sphere and the circle, wherever they occur in Nature  indeed,
in the whole universe. Owing to the plasticity that is everywhere
present, the sphere and the circle are perpetually undergoing
modification in their form, being moulded and turned in various ways.
Going inwards, I shall have to show next the astral organisation
(purple); farther in, the ether organisation (yellow); and finally 
pushed right inside, as it were  the physical organisation
(white).

So now you have our
second being changed into the head of man, and our first changed into
the metabolism-and-limbs system. And in fact, this is how things
really are in man. In the head organisation the ego hides itself
right inside, the astral body is also comparatively hidden, while
outside, showing form and shape, are the physical body and the ether
body, giving form also to man's countenance. In the
metabolism-and-limbs system, on the other hand, the ego is on the
outside, vibrating all over the organism in its sensibility to warmth
and to touch. Proceeding inwards from the ego, we have then the
astral body vibrating in an inward direction; farther in, it all
becomes etheric; and finally, inside the bones, it becomes physical.

We go therefore
outwards from ego to physical body in the head organisation;
the arrangement there is centrifugal. In the metabolism-and-limbs
system, it is centripetal; we go here inwards from ego to
physical. And the arrangement in the rhythmic system, in between the
two, is in perpetual flow and interchange, so that one simply cannot
say whether it is going from without inwards or from within outwards.
For the rhythmic system is, in fact, half head system and half
metabolism-and-limbs system. When we breathe in, it is more
metabolism-and-limbs system; when we breathe out, it is more head
system. The relationship between systole and diastole is expressed in
the fact that the head system is to the limb system as outbreathing
is to inbreathing. We carry therefore in us, you see, two directly
opposite beings  mediated by the middle part of our organism,
the rhythmic organism. What follows from this? A result, that is of
no little importance.

Suppose we receive
something through the medium of our head  as we do, for
instance, when we listen to what another person is saying. Having
been received by our head, it goes first into the ego, and into the
astral body. But an interplay is always taking place in man's
organism, and the moment something is caught and held fast, by means
of an impression received in the one ego organisation (here in the
head), it immediately vibrates right through into the other ego
organisation (below). And then the same thing happens the moment
something strikes home into the astral organisation; that too
vibrates right through into the other astral organisation. If it were
not so, we would have no memory. We owe our memory to the fact that
all the impressions we receive from the external world have their
reflections, their mirror-pictures, in the metabolism-and-limbs
organisation. If I receive an impression from without, it disappears
from the head organisation  which, as we have seen, is
centripetally arranged, from physical on the outside to ego within.
For the ego must maintain itself, it must hold its own. It cannot
carry one single impression for hours on end; if it did, it would
have to identify itself with the impression. No, it is down below
that the impressions are preserved; and they have to make their way
up again, for us to remember them.

But now, it may quite
well happen that the whole of the lower system, which is, as we have
seen, in direct polar contrast to the upper system, is
constitutionally weak. In that case, when impressions occur, the
impressions do not stamp themselves deeply enough into the lower
system. The ego, let us say, receives an impression. If everything
were normal, the stamp of the impression would be passed on to the
lower system and only in the event of memory be fetched up again. If
however the system down below, and in particular, the ego
organisation  which covers there the whole periphery 
is too weak, so that the impressions do not stamp themselves strongly
enough, then the impressions that fail to sink down into the ego
organisation of the lower system, keep streaming back again into the
head.

We have with us a child
who is constituted just in this way. One day we showed him, for the
first time, a watch. It interested him. But his limb organisation is
weak; consequently, the impression does not sink down, but rays back
again. I sit down by this child, and begin to talk to him. All the
time he is perpetually saying: Lovely watch! Hardly
have I said a few more words than he says again: A lovely
watch! The impression keeps coming back. In the education of
children we must pay attention to such tendencies, of which there may
sometimes be only very faint indications, but which are nevertheless
quite important. For if we do not succeed in strengthening the too
weak metabolism-and-limbs organisation, then this streaming
back of impressions will go on happening with greater and
greater intensity, and in later life the patient will suffer from the
type of paranoia that is associated with fixed ideas. He will
suffer from firmly fixed ideas. He will know that these ideas have no
business to take up their abode, as it were, in his soul in this
persistent way, but he will not be able to dismiss them. Why can he
not dismiss them? Because while, up there above, there is the
conscious soul-life, the unconscious, down below, is out of
control; it keeps pushing certain ideas back into consciousness,
which then become fixed ideas.

We said that the boy
has a metabolism-and-limbs system that is too weakly developed. What
does this mean? When metabolism and limbs are too weakly developed,
the albumen substance in the human organism is prevented from
containing the right amount of sulphur. We then have a
metabolism-and-limbs system which produces albumen that is poor in
sulphur. This can quite well happen; the proportion in which the
constituents are combined in the albumen is, in such a case,
different from what is usual. And, in consequence, we have in the
patient what I have just been describing  fixed ideas,
beginning to announce themselves in the organism in the years of
childhood.

But now the opposite
condition may also arise. The system of metabolism and limbs may be
so constituted that it is too strongly attracted to sulphur. The
albumen will then be too rich in sulphur. It will have in it carbon,
oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and  in proportion  too
much sulphur. In a metabolism-and-limbs system of this kind 
for the system is influenced in its manifestations by the particular
combination of the substances within it  there will not be, as
before, the urge to push everything back; but, on the contrary, in
consequence of the albumen being too rich in sulphur, the impressions
will be absorbed too powerfully, they will nest themselves in too
strongly.

Note that this is a
different condition from the one I described in an earlier lecture,
where there is a congestion at the surface of an organ. That
condition gives rise, as we saw, to fits. It is not congestion
that we have now, but a kind of absorption of the impressions: the
impressions are, as it were, sucked in  and consequently
disappear. We bring it about that the child has impressions, but to
no purpose; impressions of a particular nature simply disappear into
the oversulphurous albumen. And only if we can succeed in getting
these impressions back, in drawing them out again from the sulphurous
albumen  only then shall we be able to establish a certain
balance in the whole organism of spirit, soul and body. For the
disappearance of the impressions in the sulphurousness of the
metabolism-and-limbs system induces a highly unsatisfactory condition
of soul; it has a disturbing, exciting effect. The whole organism is
a little agitated, a slight tremor runs through it.

As you know, I have
often said that Psycho-Analysis is dilettantism squared,
because the Psycho-Analyst has no real knowledge of soul or spirit or
body  nor of ether body; he does not know what it is that is
taking place, all he can do is to describe. And since this is all he
can do, he is quite content simply to say: The things have
disappeared down below; we must fetch them up again. The
strange thing is, you see, that materialism is quite unable to probe
thoroughly into the qualities even of matter! Otherwise it
would be known that the disappearance of the impressions is due to
the fact that the albumen-substance in the will organism contains too
much sulphur. Only by following the path of Spiritual Science can the
nature and character of physical substance be discovered.

It would be good if
those who have to educate abnormal children would learn to have an
eye for whether a child is rich or poor in sulphur. We shall, I hope,
be able to speak together of many different forms of soul
abnormalities, but you ought really to come to the point where
certain symptoms indicate of themselves the main direction in which
you have to look for the cause of the trouble. Suppose I have a child
to educate, in whom I observe that impressions make difficulties for
him. This may, of course, be due to conditions described in the
previous lectures. But if I am right in attributing it to the
condition we have been describing today, then how am I to proceed?

To begin with, I look
at the child. (The first thing is, of course, to know the child,
to make oneself thoroughly acquainted with him; that is the first
essential.) I look at him, and notice one of the most superficial of
symptoms, namely, the colour of his hair. If the child has black
hair, I shall not take the trouble to investigate whether he be rich
in sulphur, for a child who has black hair certainly cannot be rich
in sulphur, though it is possible he may be poor in sulphur. If,
therefore, abnormal symptoms are present, I shall have to look for
their cause in some other sphere. Even if recurring ideas show
themselves, I shall nevertheless, in the case of a child with black
hair, have to look for the cause elsewhere than in richness of
sulphur. If however I have to do with a fair-haired or red-haired
child, I shall look for signs of overmuch sulphur in the albumen.
Fair hair is the result of overmuch sulphur, black hair comes from
the iron in the human organism. It is indeed the case that so-called
abnormalities of soul and spirit can be followed right into the
physical substance of the organism.

Now, let us take a
little volcano of this kind, a sulphurous child, who sucks down
impressions into the region of the will, where they stiffen and
cannot get out. We shall very quickly be able to detect this in the
child. He will be subject to states of depression and melancholy. The
hidden impressions that he carries inside him are a torment to him.
We must raise them to the surface, and we must go about it, not with
psycho-analysis as it is understood today, but with a true and right
psycho-analysis. We must observe the child and find out what kind of
thing it is that is inclined to disappear in him. In the case of a
child who confronts us on the one hand with inner excitement and on
the other hand outwardly with a certain apathy, we shall have to
watch carefully until we can ascertain quite exactly what things he
remembers easily and what things he lets disappear within him. Things
that do not come back to him, we should bring before him repeatedly,
again and again, and as far as possible in rhythmic sequence. A great
deal can be done in this direction, and often in a far simpler way
than people imagine. Healing and education  and the two are,
as you know, nearly related  do not depend so much on
concocting all kinds of mixtures  be they physical or
psychical!  but on knowing exactly what can really help.

What is important,
then, is to be able to know in any particular case what particular
substance is required; we must really succeed in following the path
that brings us to that knowledge.

In my experience in the
Waldorf School I have often come across children who seem, in a way,
quite apathetic, but at the same time show signs also of being
inwardly in a state of excitement. We had, for instance, in Herr K's
Class, a particularly odd little person. He was at once excited and
apathetic. He has by now improved considerably. When he was in the
third class  he is now in the fifth  his apathy showed
itself in the fact that it was not easy to teach him anything; he
never took anything in, he learned only very slowly and with
difficulty. But scarcely had Herr K. turned away from him and begun
to bend over another child in front, than up would jump this little
spark and hit him smack on the back! The boy was, you see, at one and
the same time  inwardly, in his will, like quicksilver
and intellectually an apathetic child.

There are, in fact,
quite a number of children who have this kind of disposition, in
greater or less degree; and it is important to note that in such
children the capacity for absorption of external impressions is as a
rule limited to impressions of a particular kind or type. If we have
the right inspiration  and it will come, once we have the
right disposition of mind and soul  we shall find for the
child a certain sentence, for example, and bring it before him,
suggest it to him. This can work wonders. It is only a question of
guiding the whole activity and exertions of the child, of turning
them in a certain direction. But this the teacher must achieve; and
he can easily do so, provided he does not try to be too clever, but
rather to live in such a way that the world, as it were, lies open to
his view; he should not ponder overmuch about the world, but behold
it, as it shows itself to him.

Think how boring it is
 and what I am about to say is something you need to take
seriously if you want to educate abnormal children  only think
how tedious it is to have to go through life with no more than a
handful of concepts! The soul-life of many people today is terribly
barren and tedious, just because they are forced to get along with a
very few concepts. With so small a range of concepts mankind slides
all too easily into decadence. How hard it is for a poet today to
find rhymes; all the rhymes have been used before! It is the same in
the other arts; on every hand we have echoes and reminders of the
past, or there is nothing new left to be done. Look at Richard
Strauss, who is now so famous  and at the same time so
severely criticised. He has made all kinds of innovations in
orchestral music, merely in order to avoid repeating eternally the
same old things.

But now think, on the
other hand, what an interesting time you could have if you set out to
study, let us say, every possible form of nose! Each person has a
different nose; and if you were to learn to be observant and to have
a quick perception for all the various forms of nose, you would soon
begin to have variety in your mental content, and it would then be
possible also for your concepts to become inwardly alive, you would
be continually moving from one to another. I have taken the nose
merely as an example, of course. Through developing an intelligent
feeling for form as such, for all the variety of form that
lies open to our perception, we shall actually be cultivating a
disposition of soul that will enable us to receive inspiration when
the occasion requires.

As you live your way
into this beholding of the world  not a thinking about, but a
real beholding of the world  you will find that, if you have a
child who is inwardly sulphurous, alert and active, but outwardly
apathetic, then, through your being able to behold him, something
will suggest itself to you in connection with him and his special
constitution, that provides you with the right idea. You will perhaps
feel: I must say to him every morning: The sun is shining on
the hill  or it can be some other sentence; it can be
quite a simple, everyday sentence. What matters is that it comes to
him rhythmically. When something of this kind is brought to
the child rhythmically, approaching him as it were from outside, then
all the sulphurous element in him is unburdened, it becomes freer.
So, with these children  who should indeed be protected in the
tender years of childhood, lest later on they become the pet victims
of Psycho-Analysts  with these children we shall achieve a
great deal if we reckon especially with their rhythmic nature, and
let some such sentence be imparted to them so that it comes to them
from outside again and again, rhythmically.

It is, in fact, very
good to make a regular practice of this with all children. It works
beneficially. In the Waldorf School we have arranged that school
begins with a verse which, as it were, saturates the life of thought,
day after day, in rhythmic sequence. And where you have a case of
overabsorption in the organism, this practice will definitely help to
bring relief.

We shall be doing the
right thing for abnormal children, if we bring them together in
groups every morning. If we have only a small number of children, we
can of course, at any rate to begin with, take them all together.
Something quite wonderful can come out of this. Let the children
repeat a verse that is in the nature of a prayer, even though there
may be some among them who cannot say a word; you will find this
repeating in chorus has a wonderful balancing influence. And
particularly in the case of a child in whom impressions tend to
disappear, will it be important to induce certain impressions by
means of such rhythmical repetition. You can change the impressions,
say every three or four weeks, but you must continue bringing them to
the child again and again. This will have the result of relieving the
internal condition; it can indeed happen that the albumen gradually
ceases to have an excess of sulphur-content. How is one to explain
this? The trouble is, as we have seen, that the internal parts of the
child are not giving back the impressions; that is to say, the
movement from below upwards is too weak, it is even negative. If now
we bring in a strong impulse from above, we rouse the
movement from below (that is weak) to a stronger activity.

Suppose, however, we
have the opposite state of affairs. Suppose we have children who
already begin to show a tendency to fixed ideas. The raying back of
impressions is in these children too strong; there is too little
sulphur in the plasma. Here we shall have to do the contrary of what
we did before. When we observe that the same sentence, the same
impression is perpetually coming again and again to the child, it
will be helpful if we ourselves fabricate for him a new impression
(one which our instinct tells us may be right for this child) and
then bring it to him in a gentle whisper, murmuring it softly in his
ear.

The treatment could,
for example, take the following form. The teacher says: Look,
there's red! The child: It's a lovely watch!
Teacher: But you must look at the red. Child:
A lovely watch! And now we try repeating, each time a
little more softly, a new impression which has the effect of
paralysing the first. We say very softly: Forget the watch! 
Forget the watch!  Forget the watch! Whispering to the
child in this way, you will find that you gradually whisper away the
fixed idea; as you whisper more and more softly, the fixed idea
begins to yield, it too grows fainter and fainter. The remarkable
thing is that when the idea is spoken  when the child
hears it spoken  it is more weakly thought; it
gradually quietens down, and at length the child gets the better of
it. So we have this method too that we can use; and, as a matter of
fact, very good results can be achieved with a treatment of this
simple nature.

If only such things
were known! Think how it is in an ordinary school. You have a class,
and in this class are children who already have a tendency, though
perhaps only slight, to fixed ideas. They are not transferred to
special classes for backward children, they continue in their own
class. And now perhaps there is a teacher who has a voice like
thunder, who shouts loud enough to make the walls fall down. Later
on, these children will turn into crazy men and women, suffering from
fixed ideas. It would never have happened, had the teacher only known
that he should at times speak more quietly, that he ought really to
whisper certain things softly to the children. So very much depends
on the manner in which we meet the children and deal with them!

Then, of course, in
cases of this kind, the psychical treatment can be combined quite
simply with ordinary therapy. If we have a child in whom impressions
tend to disappear, it will be good to set out with the definite
resolve to combat in this child the strong tendency he has to develop
sulphur in the albumen. We can make good headway in this direction by
seeing to it that the child has the right kind of nourishment. If,
for instance, we were to give him a great deal of fruit, or food that
is prepared from fruit, we should be nurturing and fostering his
sulphurous nature. If, on the other hand, we give him a diet that is
derived from roots, and contains substances that are rich, not in
sugar, but in salt, then we shall be able to heal such a
child. Naturally, this does not mean we are to sprinkle his food
copiously with salt, but we should give him foods in which salt is
contained  as it were, in already digested form. You will find
that you can discover methods of this kind by learning to pay
attention to things that are actually going on all the time in the
world around you. (Here Dr. Steiner related a fact that he had
himself observed, namely, that the population of a certain district
instinctively preferred a particular diet, which worked
counter to an illness that was prevalent in that district.) And so,
in the case of these children, instead of leaving them to become
subjects later on for the Psycho-Analyst, it would be far better if
we were to give them in early childhood a diet that suits their need
 a diet, that is, consisting of rather salty food.

Take now the opposite
case  children who fail to absorb impressions, children in
whom the impressions stream back. These children are poor in sulphur,
and the best treatment for them is to give them as much fruit as
possible; they will soon acquire a taste for it and enjoy eating it.
If their condition has become decidedly pathological, we should try
also to bring fragrance and aroma into their food; they should have
fruits that smell sweetly. For aroma contains a strong sulphurous
element. And for a very serious case, we shall have to administer
sulphur direct. This can show you once again how from a spiritual
study of the conditions, we are led straight on to the therapy that
is required. But it must be spiritual study; it will never do
to rest content with the mere description of phenomena; that will get
us no further than symptomatology. What we have to do is to try to
penetrate, in the way I have shown you, right into the inner
structure and texture of the organism.

We have been
considering irregularities which can occur in the human being when
the lower part of him is not in right accordance with the upper part,
so that the impressions which the head organisation receives above,
fail to find the right resonance in the metabolism-and-limbs
organisation. But now the condition is also possible where throughout
the human being as a whole, ego organisation, astral organisation and
etheric-physical organisation do not fit well together, do not
harmonize. The physical organisation, let us say for example, is too
dense. The child will then be absolutely incapable of sinking his
astral body into this densified physical organisation. He will
receive an impression in the astral body, and the astral body can
stimulate the corresponding astrality of the metabolic system, but
the stimulation is not passed on to the ether body, least of all to
the physical. We can recognise this condition in a child by noticing
how he reacts if we say to him: Take a few steps forward.
He will not be able to do it. He does not rightly understand what he
has to do. That is, he understands quite well the words we say, but
he does not convey their meaning to his legs; it is as though the
legs did not want to receive it. If we find this  that the
child is in difficulties when we tell him to do something which
involves the use of his legs, that he hesitates to bring his legs
into movement at all  then that is for us a first sign that
his physical body has become too hardened and is unwilling to receive
thoughts; the child, in fact, shows indications of being
feeble-minded. Since in such conditions the body bears too
heavily on the soul, we shall find that moods of depression and
melancholy also occur.

On the other hand, if a
child's legs never wait for a command, but are perpetually wanting to
run about, then we have in that child a tendency to a condition of
mania. The tendency need only show itself very slightly, to
begin with, but it is in the legs that we shall notice it first of
all. It is accordingly most important that we should always include
in our field of observation what a child does with his legs 
and also with his fingers. A child who likes best to let his hands
and legs  for you can notice the same thing in the hands 
hang about anyhow, flop on to things, has the predisposition to be
feeble-minded. A child who is perpetually moving his fingers,
catching hold of everything, kicking out in all directions with his
feet, is predisposed to become maniacal, and possibly violent.

But now these symptoms
that are so marked in the limbs can be observed in all activities. In
activities that are more connected with the spiritual and mental,
they show themselves in a slighter form, and yet here too they are
quite characteristic. In many children, for instance, you may be able
to notice something like the following. A child acquires a knack of
doing something with his hands. Let us say, he learns to draw a face
in profile. And now, he simply cannot stop himself; whenever he sees
anyone, he immediately wants to draw his profile. It becomes quite
mechanical. This is a very bad sign in a child. Nothing will persuade
him out of it. If he is just about to draw a profile, I can talk to
him as much as ever I like, I can even offer him a sweet  he
goes on just the same, the profile must be drawn! This is connected
with the maniacal quality that develops when intellect runs to
excess. The reverse of this  namely, the urge to do nothing,
even when all the conditions are there ready, the urge not to let the
thought go over into work and action  is connected with the
feeble-mindedness that may be imminent.

All this goes to show
that by learning to bring the limbs into proper control, we can do
much to counteract on the one hand feeble-mindedness, and on the
other hand the tendency to mania. And here the way is marked out for
us at once to Curative Eurythmy. [For
the relation of Curative Eurythmy to Eurythmy as Art see end of
Lecture 12.] In the case of a feebleminded child, what
you have to do is to bring mobility into his metabolism-and-limbs
system; this will stimulate also his whole spiritual nature. Let such
a child do the movements for R, L, S, I (ee), and you will see what a
good effect it will have. If, on the other hand, you have a child
with a tendency to mania, then, knowing how it is with his
metabolism-and limbs system, you will let him do the movements
for M, N, B, P, A (as in Father), U (as in Ruth), and again you will
see what an influence this will have on his maniacal tendency. We
must always remember how intimate the connection still is in the
young child between physical-etheric on the one hand, and
soul-and-spirit on the other. If we bear this continually in mind, we
shall find our way to the right methods of treatment.